Walter G. Madison, Sr.

Walter G. Madison, Sr. (d. 1964) was the third African American student to graduate from Iowa State College. His son, Walter G. Madison, Jr. is possibly the first African American boy to be born in Ames, Iowa.

Life and Education

Walter G. Madison, Sr. attended Tuskegee Institute for his undergraduate degree. He attended Iowa State College for his graduate degree in Engineering. He is noted as the third Black person to graduate from Iowa State College.

According to the Ames Intelligencer, “Madison was a public-spirited young man. In 1915, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Ames Weekly Tribune. A traveling troupe had just put on a tent show presentation of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in Ames. Grateful for writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Madison explained at length that it was now ‘not the message of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of fifty years ago, but…we need respect, pure and simple respect – not an abstract, something unearned, but due recognition for our status in the things that measure men'."

Madison had a successful plumbing business in Ames, Iowa. He is credited with constructing some of the city's sewer system during the Ames paving project of 1916-1917 and with writing a part of the first Iowa Plumbing Code. His plumbing business was first located in the Masonic Building and later in the Olsan Building on the southwest corner of Main and Burnett.

Madison's life in Ames was less than idealic. According to the Ames Intelligencer, "[I]n 1922, Madison took a client into an Ames restaurant on Main Street for their noon meal. The proprietor told them that they had to leave because he did not serve black people. Madison brought suit against the restaurant and was represented in the Story County District Court by the law firm Lee and Garfield. He won the verdict. The award was only $100.00 but the win was considered important."

In 1930, Madison moved to Nashville where he ran a successful plumbing contract business. Later he moved to Washington DC where he became a professor of Engineering at Howard University.

Madison's son, Walter G. Madison, Jr was possibly the first African American boy born in Ames, Iowa. He was born in 1918. Madison, Jr also received an engineering degree from Iowa State College and partnered in the plumbing business with his father.

References

• The Ames Intelligencer: Early African-American Families of Ames, Spring 1991 by Farwell T. Brown